NetBeans is an application development environment that programmers may use to write, compile, debug, and deploy programs. It is an open-source tool and is used by many programmers as a powerful tool aiding in the creation of software applications.
Forte™ for Java™ (FFJ), also known as Sun One Studio™ for Java™, deployed by Sun Microsystems™, Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif., is a product family that extends the NetBeans Tools platform with custom modules for developing applications for the Java platform. Since it is based on the NetBeans platform, however, it has certain peculiarities. NetBeans also does not have direct access to the user-interface facilities of the operating system, thus resulting in applications that may have interfaces varying wildly from the operating systems on which they are running.
Furthermore, NetBeans uses dynamic menu generation. After the first time a menu is created, the menu is cached, and thus subsequent calls' performances are acceptable. However, the first menu appearance may take a longer time to load. Additionally, due to a module initiation model, NetBeans has a long perceived startup time.
Another open source framework known as Eclipse runs on a Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT), which works differently than NetBeans. SWT also has access to the user-interface facilities of the operating system. Additionally, Eclipse has a larger variety of specialized modules than NetBeans.
Therefore, it makes sense to extend the specialized modules available in FFJ to Eclipse. However, extending this functionality to Eclipse is not a simple task. One solution is to rewrite everything from scratch. This, however, is extremely time-consuming, and two separate sets of source code need to be maintained (one for NetBeans and one for Eclipse). Another possible solution is to write a conversion module. FFJ on Eclipse would have an additional plug-in that would be called by the plug-in stubs. The conversion module would, in turn, call the FFJ modules. While this solution requires less work than a complete rewrite, it creates another level of indirection that would slow down already slow FFJ modules. Additionally, the FFJ on Eclipse would be a mix of components from both platforms that might be confusing to a user considering that they may have a different look and feel.
What is needed is a solution for extending FFJ to Eclipse in an efficient and reliable manner.